Activision bans over 350,000 Warzone and COD accounts for racism & toxic behavior

Activision has announced that over 300,000 Call of Duty accounts spanning multiple titles such as Warzone and Black Ops Cold War have been banned in a new toxicity report.

Call of Duty has announced they are taking aim at toxic behavior in-game with the use of new tools to better monitor player antics and deliver a “fun gameplay experience for all players.”

The report, published on May 26, details the gaming juggernaut’s plans to combat in-game toxicity, such as racism, and the effect their current efforts have had to make their games less hostile.

Specifically, they state that over the past year, 350,000 Warzone, Black Ops Cold War, COD Mobile and Modern Warfare accounts were banned for racism and toxic behavior.

All of the bans for toxic behavior were supposedly based on player reports and a review of the player name database.

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Speaking of which, the anti-toxicity, enforcement and technology teams have deployed special in-game filters to identify names, clan tags and even profiles that could be seen as offensive.

The technology applies to 11 languages so far and also extends to text chat. That said, it’s unclear to what extremes COD has gone to remove any potential offense as they didn’t share a list of the filtered words in the report.

“We know we have a long way to go to reach our goals. This is just the start,” the report says.

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Additionally, the team has promised an enforcement approach to combat sexism, hate speech and other forms of harassment in-game.

They state that they plan to increase resources to detect toxic behavior, increase their communication with the community and have a consistent, fair review of the enforcement policies.

The report comes a month after a viral video surfaced showing Grammy award-winner T-Pain dealing with racist trolls in a Black Ops Cold War lobby.

It will be interesting to see how Activision continues to deal with the situation, especially leading up to Call of Duty 2021.